CNN is reporting the following comment from Harry Reid:

"Joe Lieberman has done something that I think was improper, wrong, and I'd like if we weren't on television, I'd use a stronger word of describing what he did. But Joe Lieberman votes with me a lot more than a lot of my senators. He didn't support us on military stuff and he didn't support us on Iraq stuff. You look at his record, it's pretty good."

Reid goes on to say he wants to strip Lieberman of his current cairmanship at Homeland Security and give him a committee with a lower profile. Lieberman has called this "unacceptable."

I just don't get it. Why negotiate with him?

Lieberman has made clear that he votes his conscious, so he is not voting "with Reid" in any sense; he is voting the same way as Reid, and would presumably continue to do so since we can all assume that the "holier-than-thou" Joe Lieberman is not motivated by petty concerns like the rest of us, but only his unerring judgment of what he believes is right and in the nation's interest.

The current plan now calls for the Democratic caucus to vote on what to do with him.

I don't understand the ins and outs of the Senate well enough. Is there some reason that Reid just doesn't decide? By all means, he can take the temperature of his caucus, but why all the theater?

Just kick him out. It's really not that difficult.

Reid is not a strong leader IMHO. But he should see that tolerating Lieberman's extremely high profile break with the Democrats is not healthy for the party. In a parliamentary system, a much more minor infraction would have him disciplined, while endorsing and campaigning for the opposition is simply not tolerated, at least in the UK.
Isn't it all about Iraq, anyway? If Lieberman is defined so strongly by this one issue, he's clearly not understanding that there are other policy questions that fire up his colleagues perhaps just as strongly. At this point, there's no other recourse than the obvious one.  

But after more thought, and reading the comments of others, I've changed my mind.  I think Lieberman should get the boot.

I do think we need to be careful when framing the reason why, however.  I wouldn't want to discourage independent thinking among Democrats - and I truly believe in voting with your conscience and if you can't do that with your constituents views.  

I think Lieberman did more than have a disagreement on the issues.  Let's lay it out:

There are two issues.  One issue is the matter of chairmanship and participation in committees.  The other issue is the matter of booting him from the Democratic caucus.

1) Lieberman loses primary battle in 2006.  Instead of supporting the Democratic nominee, he runs as an independent and wins.  I think this is grounds for booting him out of the caucus.

2) Lieberman supports Bush lockstep on foreign policy, putting our nation further in peril.  We can chalk this up to a political disagreement, as opposed to disloyalty.  I think this should be considered when it comes to him chairing committees.  He has shown poor judgement, resulting in death of our troops, Iraqis, and a huge burden on tax payers.  The poor judgement calls in to question his ability to lead as chairman.

3) Lieberman supports his friend, John McCain, during his run for office.  I could live with this given that McCain and him are friends and McCain was at some point a maverick in his own party (until he became a rabid neocon).  I don't think this is a serious offense against Democrats in terms of deserving a punitive response (a political response is well deserved).

4) Lieberman launches attacks against the Democratic nominee for President.  He transitions from supporting McCain to going negative against Obama.  This is grounds to kick him out of the caucus.  

Have I left anything out?

I'm sure there will be arguments against me here, but I think it's important to provide a dissent. I'm not totally sure where I lie on this, but let's lay out some of the counterarguments.

Sure, take away his chairmanship, that's a party prerogative. But why exactly is kicking him out of the caucus necessary or relevant?

As much as I would love to have a more solidly Democratic Senator - in fact, I'd love a lot more of them (like in MN, and AK, and GA...) - one of the core principles of our democracy is that we choose representatives who we trust to make the right decisions--then vote them out if we think they made the wrong ones. These representatives - whose ideologies would ideally be as diverse as those of the electorate at large - caucus with the party they identify with more, and elect a leader, set caucus rules, assign committee chairs, etc.

Although Sen. Lieberman is clearly a righist hawk on foreign policy, is he not also pretty leftist on economic and social policy. He identifies more with the Democrats than the Republicans, and the Democrats identify more with him than with pretty much anybody on the Republican side.

Roland the HTG says, "His side lost, he loses with them." But what is "his side"? All we seem to care about here is his support of the Iraq War and his support of John McCain; that's no surprise, that's all anybody talks about with respect to Lieberman. But his "side" has also included being pro-choice and pro-gay rights, pro-environment, and fairly progressive on economics. He campaigned for McCain, but he also campaigned for Kerry. He voted with Republicans on Iraq, but he still voted with Democrats 87% of the time in the current Congress - more than Evan Bayh, for instance, who far from being excluded, was considered for Obama's VP.

Other than the satisfaction of exacting vengeance, what do the Democrats gain by ousting him from the party? Little. What does our democracy gain by punishing someone for supporting the candidate they most want to be president? Less.

If this is about "enforcing party discipline," fine. I'm not so naive as to think this is unimportant. And taking away his chairmanship is a serious sanction. Forcing him from the party with which he chooses to identify - and he's clearly a Democrat for ideological reasons, not for the power, or else he'd have been a Republican back when they had the majority - seems undemocratic, irrelevant, and childish.

No matter what, we're stuck with him for at least four more years. Here's to a strong 2012 Lamont (or other Democrat) campaign.

It is another to openly campaign for an opposition party member.  He spoke at the Republican Party Convention; and conventions are intensely partisan events (you don't go to them unless you are a partisan or a member of the press).  

I can understand if you support someone because you agree on issues that super critical to you.  But I would think you would have the common sense and courtesy to keep a low profile on that.  No one has to know who you vote for when you go into that voting booth.  Also I think elected members of the party should be held to a different standard than just the rank and file.  It's perfectly reasonable to advise people that they should vote for who they think is best for this nation.  That is fairly innocuous.  And he could have left it at that.  But he is obviously, like many politicians, merely an opportunist at heart.  It seems to me he wanted a cabinet appointment and certainly the only way to that was a McCain Presidency.  I can't fault him for ambition, but actions have consequences.

When you go out of your way to campaign for the opposition and speak poorly of your party's candidate, that suggests you have an extremely low opinion not only of the party's candidate but also of the people who nominated that candidate.  Honestly, I don't see why Lieberman would want to continue on in the Democratic Party since he feels we are incapable of selecting a candidate that would be good for America.  Lieberman said over and over again that Obama's judgment would put our nation in peril.  Seems to me that his opinions extends to all the Democrats that voted for him.  Afterall, we voted for a man that he thinks would put out nation at risk.  It's not just a slight against Obama's judgment; it's a slight against ours.

As far as the punishment goes, stripping him of his chairmanship will mean his exit from the caucus.  He has basically said that.  If he leaves the caucus, I would think he would lose his seniority on whatever committees he was assigned to as well.  And if not, Dems should strip that from him as well.  If Republicans take him in, I doubt they would bump down any of their members to give him ranking committee member assignments.  And what is he going to do in the Republican caucus, he disagrees with them on too much.  As Republicans turn inward and start flashing their hardcore conservative credentials, I don't think there will be much room for even moderates in their party.  I suspect it is going to be already pretty lonely for Snowe, Collins, and Specter.  

He should be allowed to wander the wilderness. Better than a firm boot, the loss of any chairmanship and let's see if he remains the party.

We haven't a reason to believe he firmly holds any value he has expoused. A real test of judgment came with the Iraq War and he failed.

This all speaks to Gore's judgment too.

Lowell, you know I disagreed with you on this in the past; we talked about it a couple of times.  Back then my main argument was pragmatic.  Democratic control of the Senate hung by a thread and we needed to be cautious about losing it.  Your argument, on the other hand, was totally principled.  I agreed with the principle too.  

But even though not having a veto proof majority could cost us, we are in no danger of losing control of the Senate to the Republicans.  So pragmatically, the situation has changed.

More important, there comes a time to reward loyalty and to punish disloyalty.  Lieberman went beyond merely disagreeing with some party leaders on some issues.  Nobody should be kicked out of the caucus or stripped of leadership on a committee for principled disagreement on a particular issue.

But campaigning actively for the opposition party,  appearing publicly with them - most notably at their convention - and speaking out against Democrats during the campaign are all the actions of disloyalty.

Furthermore, Lieberman claims that the only issue he disagreed with the Democrats on was Iraq.  But McCain and the Republicans had sweepingly different views from the Democrats (and presumably Lieberman) on issues like the economy, health care reform, the environment, and energy policy.  Lieberman also is a smart enough man to know that McCain's vice presidential pick was terrible and showed poor judgment. Picking Palin was putting politics above country and pandering to a dogmatic base.

So, any claim that Lieberman's support of McCain was entirely principled doesn't wash. Lieberman violated many of his own beliefs to stump for this man.  Further, Lieberman used to enjoy union support and says he's pro labor. McCain was one of the most anti-labor candidates to run in a long time. So Lieberman betrayed other friends.

It's past time to boot him out.

Another Reason to Can Joe

As we and many others have chronicled, there's a surfeit of reasons to strip Sen. Lieberman of his committee chairmanship. But one, perhaps the most obvious and substantive, has gone little mentioned. Simply put, he was terrible at it. Lieberman's committee is the senate investigations and oversight committee, the senate's counterpart to Rep. Henry Waxman's committee in the House. And if you remember a lot about Waxman's investigations and hearings and nothing about Lieberman's, that's because Lieberman didn't hold any. Even in the face of endless scandals of the late Bush administration, Lieberman couldn't find anything worth poking into.

--Josh Marshall

I mean, they preferred having no hard-driving Senate investigations to rock the boat and disturb the Democratic agenda (such as it was). There were indications the House Dems thought Waxman an embarrassment sometimes, weren't there? The senior service (i.e., the Senate) was barely Democratic anyway, and Senate investigations could sometimes be much more high profile in and of themselves than House partisan hearings. The hush-little-baby-don't-cry attitude no doubt suited Joe L. anyway.

Things will be different henceforth, and maybe it's time for the Senate to give Investigations and Oversight to a more committed Democrat. Let Joe "wander in the wilderness" indeed.